I'm So Glad You're Here

By Ashley Roth

Thea opens the door, pushing aside pastel streamers and plastic pacifiers to give me a hug that hurts. When she pulls away, we stare at one another with serene smiles I know are fake. Mine has been cultivated in front of therapists. Hers is the one a person wears when they don’t know how to react. She didn’t think I’d come.

“Morgan! I’m so glad you’re here,” she lies. I return the favor and say, “I’ve missed you.” There isn’t a good pause for me to say all the things I’d been rehearsing for weeks. Thea knows me too well and won’t believe any of them. She’ll want the real scoop—and I don’t even know what that is. I’m only pushing through, persevering like all my get-better books tell me to do.

She pulls me inside the house I could navigate in my sleep, a quaint brick box framed with terra cotta planters, forever doused in a signature blend of Yankee Candles and overpowering plug-ins. If I close my eyes, it’s still 1996 and we still have plans to gush about a cute boy in math class, where Thea’s mom will yell at us to go to sleep, and we’ll pass notes to stay quiet.

Thea guides me down the glossy hallway, floating her hand over a long table showing off the spread of food and decorations, the whole thing blatantly yonic: folds of pink tulle, the floral labias of calla lilies, the crass cake depicting childbirth through spongy angel food, candied blood, and a porcelain doll head emerging from a frosted vulva.

“Isn’t the cake ridiculous? You know my parents are dying—especially in this hallway where everyone can see it!” Thea does a vaudevillian tap on the black marble. Always performing. I force a laugh.

“Of course, there are daintier, prettier cupcakes—outside where nobody can see them,” Thea says. I wonder where her mom has stashed the booze.

Thea’s eye flicker with old clairvoyance. She asks, “Do you—I mean, we haven’t in a while. Do you want a drink?”

My response is genuinely enthusiastic.  Thea takes that as a sign to link arms on the way to the kitchen. It’s been remodeled in blinding chrome.

“They finally got a second renovation,” Thea says. She dips behind a curtain of hanging cast iron, coming up with several bottles of fancy liquors I’ve never seen, pouring them into plastic cups and finishing the concoction with a splash of rose water and cranberry juice. She pours two separate shots of vodka, gently placing it in front of me.

“For old times.” She raises her glass, the track-lighting and chrome appliances reflected silvery and murky in the clear alcohol, like oil in water. We used to guzzle stolen beers in this kitchen when it was still wood cabinets and yellow linoleum.

Thea pours another shot. The name brand liquor burns. I’m almost happy to be here.

“We should go see the other girls,” Thea’s head tilts towards the floor. My brief happiness wanes.

“I mean, you should say hi to my mom. She’ll be beyond happy to see you.” Thea weaves her fingers with mine, tugging me to a room sizzling with feminine voices and the effervescent energy that comes from talking about babies before they’re born.

***

Lauren and her protruding pregnancy are propped on couch cushions and velour pillows, a daisy wreath tangled in her long, curled hair. Thea must’ve done her sister’s make-up—heavy emphasis on nude blush, thick defined brows, a nude gloss, a sweep of shimmering highlighter on the bridge of her nose. Lauren is mute, staring at the pile of carrots and smeared hummus on her plate. The other guests also avoid eye contact.

It’s almost comedic to see Lauren as centerstage—she’d always lived in the periphery of our lives. A girl we were forced to include. A fifth wheel on dates, a third person to warrant playing Clue, our go-to when we needed a crowd. Someone to play with the leftover toys, to take the leftover boys, to turn our dynamic duo into a temporary team. Quiet. Unassuming. A space filler. Pregnant Lauren is the cause of today’s celebration, and, still, she is the dullest thing in the room.

Thea’s mom holds a plastic bin stacked with folded white onesies. An elderly aunt trails behind her with a smaller bin of glitter, markers, and tubes of puffy paint. She pauses in front of me.

“I’m so glad you could come.” Thea’s mom stares at the bin. “And you got here just in time for the games to start.” She sets the bin down, pulling out a onesie with shaking hands. She looks at it and holds it close, hesitant to hand it over.

“It’s fine, Mom.” Thea widens her eyes, her voice trill. Her mother’s smile is lopsided, and she looks away when she tosses the onesie on my lap.

Rows of nimble fingers decorate their onesies with paints and glitter and loose rainbow gems. I paint flowers on the blank onesie—pollenated glittering centers and simple, rounded petals in pale pinks and purples.

Always flowers.

Tulips first lured me to Thea, back when my grandmother was alive and lived down the road. I was six when I snuck out of Granny’s house. She’d fallen asleep watching As the World Turns, her unfinished cup of Lady Gray beside her, a limp lemon wedge floating on the top. Her house suffocating in its miasma of oily antiques, old person smell, and hard candies she’d hoarded for decades. I couldn’t breathe. I needed sunshine. The cluster of tulips three houses down shone. I couldn’t help but stop to smell the closed buds, to dip my tiny fingers inside the puckered petals. I yanked them from the soft dirt, their frayed, dirty stems streaking green and brown over my overalls. Thea’s mother had burst out the door, her face red and her fists clenched until she saw the culprit was a child. Later, Thea revealed her mother’s obsessive gardening. It was her only controlled universe, the flora in and out of the house. She didn’t yell or scold that day—she kneeled to my level and offered a glass of water for my thirsty, dying flowers. I followed this stranger inside, where Thea sat in the living room with her Barbies arranged for an exclusive party. Lauren sat on the opposite side of the room with a coloring book. Thea looked at her mother, at me, then at the wilting flowers and asked if I wanted to join her.

“It’s by invitation only,” she’d said, matter-of-fact, scooting over to make space.

Later, daisies were printed in rows on a short black dress. We wore matching ones from Contempo, when we thought we could handle college boys even though we were only fifteen. We pretended we’d been drunk before, demanding the boys pour us another cup of spiked cranberry juice.  We acted like we’d done other things, too. The boys left, and we puked in Thea’s pruned bushes. We said we could handle anything. My flower dress was pocked with cigarette burns, marbled with white crust. I threw it away in the school dumpster the next day.

Hydrangeas and peonies ballooned from glass vases on the bar patio where I met Aiden. Thea had pushed me towards a brooding Chris Cornell lookalike, but he would only answer questions with a silent nod. On the way to the bathroom, I bumped into Aiden. He had thick glasses and a shy, sweet smile. He offered to buy me a drink. Thea predicted we wouldn’t last. I knew I would never forget the smoky patio or those baby blue flowers bursting from glass globes. I would never forget how Aiden blushed when we made prolonged eye contact. Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” played from the jukebox. Aiden and I gushed over Lou Reed, surrealist paintings at the MET, and the grainy photography of Francesca Woodman. At last call, Aiden plucked a hydrangea ball from one of the vases, and handed it to me.  

“When will I see you again?” he asked. I watched the petals wilt and brown on my dresser, shoving them into my sock drawer the first night he stayed over.

I held a bouquet of dark red roses at my wedding. Thea admitted she’d been wrong. We were perfect together.

White orchids were perched on the windowsill when the doctor told me to push.

Quiet deliveries of pale irises after the cloudy ultrasounds and the sutures slashing my abdomen.

Thea gave me a packet of perennial seeds at the hospital, saying we could plant something eternal for the baby. I flushed the seeds down the toilet when I got home.  

“That’s adorable!” a vaguely-familiar woman jabs me in the side, her contrived enthusiasm stifling. My wrist juts into the paint, smearing my floral design.

“Oh—I’m sorry!” the same woman shoves wet wipes at me, but I smile politely and shake my head.

“We’ve made so many—it’s fine. The baby won’t be able to wear them all.” I like how normal my voice sounds when I says baby.

Thea holds my design up, waving her hand like Vanna White.

“Which one is your favorite, Lauren?” Thea’s tone is overly gushy.

“Morgan’s,” she says quickly, pointing in my direction. She never looks up. The others mumble how much they love my design, also avoiding eye contact. I’m a reminder of what could happen. When they look at me, they know babies can die before they’re ever born. 

Thea’s mother scoops up the little outfits, hanging them in the kitchen to dry. She pins a blue ribbon on mine, the hanging satin smudging more painted petals. When she comes back, she fills the plastic goblets with lemonade and opens another box of multigrain crackers. She smooths the cheese ball with a small knife. She hands me a gift card for Target.

“What’s the next game?” Lauren rocks on her heels, plucking a single grape from its stem before rolling it around the inside of her cheek.

“We’re going to guess how big you’ve gotten!” Thea jumps up, holding a ball of glittery string and a pair of kid’s craft scissors. She walks to each person around the room—each stranger, each elderly relative, each polite coworker—and demands that they cut the string to estimate Lauren’s girth. I lay my hands over my own stomach. Soft. Vacant. I remember the ache of my uterus stretching. My hand-decorated signs. Twelve weeks. Sixteen weeks. Twenty-five weeks. My phone propped against the spines of books, the timer set to ten seconds. My white poster board with 31 WEEKS written in fat purple markers, tossed with glue and loose white glitter. I held the sign, holding my pose. A pinch grabbed myside, but I kept smiling. 3, 2… Gooeyness in my underwear. I ran to the bathroom, finding thick gel and dark, sticky blood. Aiden drove me to the hospital, running three red lights.

“You’re dilating a little early. We’re going to put you on bedrest. We just want you to get to thirty-six weeks.” The doctor sounded confidant and sent me home.

The ultrasound had shown the baby wiggling, desperate to come out. I stayed in bed, finishing the recommended beach reads from the Today show and watching Law and Order: SVU reruns. My fingers spread wide over a still-growing belly. Thea had come over to do laundry, bringing Reuban sandwiches. Aiden came home with a box of chocolate cupcakes. He made lasagna from scratch.

Thea stands in front of me with the string, her lips pressed together, and the yarn held close to her chest.

“Do you want to guess?” she almost whispers. I nod, and pinch the shimmering rope with two fingers, the string peeling from its raveled ball.

“How far along are you?” I ask Lauren, who won’t look at me.

“Thirty-five weeks,” Lauren mumbles, before shoving a cheese-slathered stack of crackers into her mouth. A honeydew melon.

I pull a little farther.

“There.”

Thea carries the string over to Lauren, who stands up and twirls like she’s done for each guess. Thea loops the string behind Lauren’s back. The two ends touch in the front, a perfect fit.

I win again. This time a baby-powder scented candle and an artisan chocolate bar.

***

The party migrates outside, to another table covered in crinkly white paper with little porcelain baby figurines scattered between the thumbprint cookies, the baklavas, the heart-shaped lollipops, the cupcakes with swooping pink frosting and glittering dyed sugar. Thea and I sip on champagne we discreetly poured into pink paper cups. We lick frosting from our fingers and stare at the mound of wet dirt, at the muddy socket where the tetherball pole used to be. Around the dirt the grass is fluffy, shorn, and swarming with plump bumblebees. The circular pile of dirt is a blemish. I know they’ll never cover it with grass. Thea won’t let them.

“Remember the tether ball?” I guzzle the last of my champagne.

“How could I forget? You always hit it so hard it knocked me over.” Thea shoots out a single snort before she stares back at her drink. She picks at the peeling rim of her cup. 

“The next game is a little weird. It seemed like a good idea when we were going through ideas on Pinterest.” Thea looks up, her gaze floating over the old tetherball spot. Maybe she conjures up the silver pole, the thick rope, the hard rubber ball. Maybe she remembers how we stood there when our first periods dribbled down our bare thighs. Maybe she remembers me holding her hair when she puked after prom. Maybe she remembers passing the little white stick back and forth, reading and rereading the words. Pregnant. Maybe she’d stood there when Aiden called from the hospital, grounding herself before coming and crying with me. Maybe she yanked the rusted pole from the ground and threw it on the yard, standing barefoot in the grass while the sprinklers plumed water over the yard, over her legs. Maybe she’d stood there and tried to reconcile the guilt thrashing inside of her, letting herself believe a delivery of overflowing Whole Foods bags could mend the broken pieces between us. I believed it.

“I’m glad I came today, Thea. It’s the first normal thing I’ve done in a long time.”

“This is normal?” Thea chuckles, staring at the dirt socket, remembering the metal pole and swinging ball. I have to believe she remembers.

“It’s the first day I’ve felt okay in a long time, too,” I steady my voice, not sure if I’m telling the truth. Would the healthiest reaction be collapsing, allowing myself to break down in front of the person who is supposed to know me best? I know others feel better when they hear I’m doing well.

Thea removes her own rehearsed expression.

“But you’re not okay. Are you?” Plump tears slip from her eyes, streaking iridescent highlighter down her powdered cheeks.

“I don’t know.”

Thea looks back at the grass, at the patch of dirt, at the roaming bees.

“We should go get that last game over with. We’ll make it fun, I promise.”

Thea grabs my hand and yanks me back to the tulle, the crinoline, the tiny umbrellas floating in lavender-infused lemonade. A round metal table dressed in plastic placemats, each one covered in balls of clay and dollhouse accessories: a tiny wooden crib, a miniature rattle, small bonnets that look like they would fit a mouse.

Thea’s mother paces in front of the spread.

“The last game we’re going to do is make your own baby. You can use the clay and any of these little accessories. We’ll set this timer,” she holds up an hourglass, one side filled with luminous white sand. She flips it, setting it on the iron patio table. Sand drizzles down the narrow funnel.

I choose my lifeless mound of clay last. Other hands scurry over the table, grabbing lumps of beige and brown and pale peach. A girl I don’t recognize scoops up a lime green blob, telling everyone she’s making an alien baby. I choose bright pink because it’s cartoonish, the carnation pink of a baby bird. The clay warms in the curve of my palm, under my whittling fingers. Malleable and soft.

The pink isn’t cartoonish enough. It’s the same pink as the slippery babies I watched on YouTube birth videos, the faint magenta of skin first pumping with oxygen. It’s the raw hue of a baby I was going to lay on my chest. I was supposed to feel its heartbeat through its soft, sticky, pink salamander skin.

The clay bounces from my hand, smacking my thigh before I catch it. The others don’t notice. They’re twisting flailing arms, big bulbous newborn heads, slopes of tiny torsos. My dough lays shapeless in my hands, palm prints crisscrossing the uneven mold. I ball it up.

I had anticipated the positive pregnancy test. I knew the moment it happened—a Saturday morning when we didn’t want to rush out of bed, a moment with the sun slanted through the half-closed blinds, a moment before we’d even had our first cup of coffee. I wrapped the positive test in Saran wrap, driving it to Thea’s parents while Aiden was at work. Thea was between jobs and boyfriends, reimagining her life by sleeping in her old bed and staring at her old posters of Ryder Strong and Skeet Ulrich. We’d gone to the rusted tether ball pole and passed it back and forth.

“You’re going to be a great mom. You’ll have a house like this with a tether ball and your baby will sit with her best friend and they’ll have this same conversation,” Thea whispered even though there was nobody else around. I never knew what kind of mother I would be. I imagined coloring books and Candyland and forcing my child to watch all my own favorite Don Bluth movies. 

I look at the clay in my hands, the slug-like thing growing arms. The other clay babies grow around me, faster and faster. Growing clay eyes and clay curls and clay mouths formed in a first cry. I sculpt quickly, flattening the ends of the stumps into fingerless hands.

The mother-to-be message board sent emails, dinging notifications on my phone that made me giggle. Your baby is a grape, an eggplant, a butternut squash. I arranged silly photo shoots with Aiden and the appropriate produce. We cradled an avocado. We drew on a square chalkboard. 20 WEEKS! IT’S A GIRL. We placed a pink bow on a banana. We swaddled a head of cabbage. Aiden found an antique crib at a garage sale. He painted a pink bunny on a piece of plywood he found in the shed. In the room with the pink hearts and pink bunnies and frilly pink bedding we argued about names. Eve. Greta. Sophia. We laid on the white rug after he’d been careful with me. Pregnancy sex was weird, voyeuristic. I stroked his jawline, the slope of his shoulder blade. We were going to call her Harlow Olivia. It was the name engraved onto a metal plate—the name etched above a single date. Aiden’s smeared fingerprints all over the shiny metal. I couldn’t bring myself to go when it was stamped into the ground. I told Aiden to go alone.

I attach a ball to the clay body, using my fingernail to carve a smile. Blue specks as eerie eyes. I set the clay baby on my chest, patting its back to create the perfect spinal slope. The others stare, poised to save me, their own clay babies in front of them like the kids in 4H with their livestock they hug before they slaughter.

Thea drops her own clay baby. She runs my way, arms poised to catch me. I back away, reaching for a small bonnet and miniature crib. I fasten the bonnet, dunking the baby into the swaying bed. Lauren stands by the cupcakes, her fingertips dusted with colored sugar.

“I don’t want to pick a favorite.” She presses her hands to her stomach, like she’s trying to hold the baby in. I shouldn’t have come. We’re almost family, but not family enough for me to ruin Lauren’s day. Thea lays a hand over her arm and mouths for me to stay. 

Thea’s mom weaves through the girls with a shoebox, sliding the clay babies in and sealing it shut.

“We’ll just draw a winner!” she sings.

Lauren clears her throat. “I change my mind.” She points to the gangly green alien baby, swaddled in neon Play Doh and rolled in flakey glitter. “This one wins. It’s the most original. It’s not like any real baby.”

Thea gives the unknown girl a bottle of wine wrapped in stork-printed cellophane and an antique bib.

Thea’s mother and the elderly aunt pace the table, scooping up dirty plates and empty cups. One sweeps cake crumbs from the patio. The party shuffles inside, the crowd’s sibilant breathing like running water.

Lauren collapses onto her pile of satin pillows, still holding tight to her belly. Thea and her mother arrange boxes and shiny bags around her. Pastel bows and sparkling tissue paper fly around her like startled birds. I sit on a plastic foldout chair in the corner of the room, gripping its sides. The chair whines, its rheumatic joints squeak.

The girls and women coo and gasp at each gift. Thea scoops up the discarded detritus during each pause. Older women think the outfits are darling and the younger ones love how easy companies have made things like sitting and nursing. Lauren opens more gifts. She opens duplicates of things I opened nearly two years ago: cloth diapers, bristled brushes to clean bottles, stacks of scented wipes, a wicker bassinet, calendula creams for rashes my baby never had.

The room begins to dissolve, the tips turning black like ruined film, the edges eating itself. I practice calming techniques, and tell myself I can journal at home. Dr. Blakely said confrontation would be uncomfortable. She said journaling was a helpful way to organize my thoughts. She said I needed to find my own method for triggers. I never asked if going to the party was a good idea. I never told Dr. Blakely about missing Thea’s calls.

Thea rushes towards me with cups of water and lemonade, her mother holding a soaked washcloth. Water dribbles over the white apron, leaving translucent splotches.

“Are you okay?” Thea asks.

I don’t know if I’m okay. It isn’t okay that I did everything right, but was still rushed to the hospital on a day that felt so boring and regular. I’d been careful—divesting myself of caffeine, alcohol, secondhand smoke. I tracked protein and ounces of water. I exercised just enough to be healthy. My blood work was always normal. And still, I’d gone to the hospital, was forced into bedrest, was told I would be fine. Aiden said we would survive this.

But I wasn’t fine. My baby wasn’t fine. My marriage wasn’t fine.

They ripped out my daughter, drugged me with sedatives, and left me with some foggy dream where I still wonder if I actually felt my baby cold on my chest. Lauren’s baby would be laid on her chest, alive. Aiden would probably hold another baby, a baby that would be laid on some other wife’s chest.

I don’t know which memories are real. The tiny blue limbs that felt like metal. The puffy sealed eyes. The slack cheeks that should have been fat and warmed with wet kisses. I wanted drool. I wanted to feel the grip of tiny fingers. I wanted to rock a swaddled baby, not caring that I was watching the sun rise and hadn’t slept in days.

Am I yelling at Lauren’s baby shower or do I merely look like I’m about to faint? Am I telling the room of stunned woman how the doctors mechanically cut my dead baby’s umbilical cord? Am I telling them I held the scabbed skin and rubbed it on all the places I’d wanted to nuzzle my baby? Am I screaming that it’s not fair?

“Are you all right?” Thea’s mother presses a wet washcloth to my forehead.

After my baby was delivered—she’d never gotten to be born—I’d gone under again. Had I imagined Aiden crying? The doctors mumbled, shoving another tube into my IV. Blurred conversations. Crisp paperwork. Pain control. Hysterectomy. Hormones. Infertility.

Stillbirth.

Death before birth. Tombstone. A grave I couldn’t visit, even when Aiden said it would bring her closure. He said so many things. He tucked me into bed, and I laid there staring at the ceiling for hours. My mind numb. My body bristling with adrenaline I couldn’t shut off. He fed me melatonin, Xanax. I drank NyQuil when he wasn’t looking. I guzzled entire bottles of wine. I stayed awake. I stayed alive. Aiden said he loved me. He tried to touch me, and things came out of my mouth that were vituperative and untrue, things that isolated me on purpose. He ran the bathwater. He poured Epsom crystals into the warm water. I couldn’t stop saying those things. I said it was his fault. When he went to work, I felt remorse and cried and held my hands over the scar tissue and willed time to roll back, to find out about the crooked placenta, to stop the infection. My ears strained to hear baby cries. My arms ached from the heaviness of a wriggling ghost. Aiden slept facing the other way. He started sleeping somewhere else. He told me he was sorry. I locked myself in the bathroom when he tried to say good-bye.

“Are you okay?” The women all douse me with water and shove plates of food into my lap. They’re fanning me with empty gift bags. They’re ushering me into Thea’s old room, where it still smells like CK One and musty flannel and I can hear the faraway sounds of L7 and Bikini Kill and Letters to Cleo on cassettes that warped because they played them too much. I can still smell the plastic Barbie hair and feel the strangling elastic of stacked Scrunchie socks. I can hear us with the screeching tape recorder, swearing we’ll never become regular, boring adults. That we’ll live together in giant mansions, never becoming wives or mothers because we’ll never be able to leave each other.

Thea peels back the floral comforter. She plucks off my shoes.

“I came to your house, you know. A lot. I wanted to see you. I thought you’d be so mad over the invitation you’d call, and I could at least hear your voice. I should’ve just called. I shouldn’t have put you in this situation.”

I don’t tell Thea I’d peeked through the crooked blinds, that I’d watched Thea stand there with bulging paper bags. I can’t open my mouth and thank Thea for the food, the expensive bottle of wine I’d finished at nine AM. I can’t tell Thea I tried to bury the invitation in the trash. I’d tried to drown the Victorian cherub, the proud stork, the pastel cardstock, and the shimmering vellum beneath wet coffee grounds and unfinished microwaveable macaroni and cheese. But I missed her. I missed us.  

“I should have waited for you to be ready. We can do something else, anything. Watch movies, eat ice cream,” Thea says, sliding on the bed beside me.

The party pulses beneath the bed, the floor. The sounds of strollers wheeled over varnished floors, of dishes being washed, of celebrating the robust baby swimming inside of Lauren. They might be swallowing whatever gossip they want to blurt out. They might be whispering their pity between cupcakes.

I roll to my side. Thea wraps her arms around me, humming Hole’s “Violet.” It almost sounds like a nursery rhyme.

THE END

Author Bio: Ashley N. Roth is a writer and educator based in Nashville. Her work has appeared in Jersey Devil Press, Literary Orphans, Moonsick Magazine, and elsewhere. When not writing, she can be found revising her website www.ashleynroth.com, starring in gory music videos, or perfecting vegan pastries with her daughter.

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